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I'm pretty negative on tech-industry arrogance, but I sympathize with Danielle's position. It may just be that I've known about her from before and that she's one of the few tech leaders whom I actually like. What she's saying about "scrutiny of unwashed masses who don't understand my business" hits the mark. With "unwashed masses", she's not complaining about average, 100-IQ Americans who'd rather go fishing than run tech companies. No one (who's worth taking seriously) has a problem with such people. She's complaining about the management consultants and serial board members who haven't actually done anything for 20 years who (because they think they're intellectual leaders, when they're not) toss out imbecilic suggestions like "Cut R&D, set up stack ranking, and give a speech about 'tough culture' to scare people" when the Q2 numbers come out a little soft. There are a lot of utter fucking morons in the business world with a hell of a lot of influence and power. Some are in tech, some are outside of it; but it's true that when you go public, the probability that drooling rubes will have the power and influence to force your hand on "tough decisions", when you should actually be leading from the front and doubling down on R&D and morale, goes up. "Unwashed masses" isn't quite the right phrase, because it suggests low social class when the actual enemy is people of high social class and power who think they have intelligence and vision (rather than luck and social connection) to match it, but who are actually drooling, anti-intellectual, sheepish morons. Still, I agree strongly with her sentiment. Everything she's saying is valid. Where she and I may disagree is on the locus of the morons. I think that most of technology's leadership is just as bad as the mainstream business leadership (and I'm not sure that I buy into the distinction). Lucas Duplan and Evan Spiegel and Travis Kalanich weren't shit onto this world by Fenrir. Someone decided to make them founders. Their existence is testament to the existence of drooling rubes in the VC ranks. The difference isn't in the average quality of people (most VCs are fucking morons, just as most management consultants are) but in the number of people to whom you're accountable. If you're private, you're accountable to a couple lead VCs and there's a chance (less than 50% by definition, because most decision-makers are drooling rubes everywhere, but probably greater than 5%) that you got lucky and drew people who are actually worth a damn. If you're public, you're accountable to a much larger number of people, most of whom are talentless and overpaid and full of themselves, and you end up gaming short-term stats in order to keep them off your back. |